Happy Tuesday everybody! It’s been a few weeks since I’ve participated in this post. Whoops?
Anyway, Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly post currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It celebrates lovely lists, wonderful books and the bookish community. This week’s topic is Books I Was Assigned to Read in School. These can be books you loved or hated. Or just tolerated. Bonus points if a tiny review is given!
So here are ten of the books I had to read for school! In order from when I read them!
Dear Levi by Elvira Woodruff: This is an oldie, both the book and when I read it. This was the first required reading I did for school – way back in fourth grade! I remember enjoying it well enough, and it was I think the first epistolary style novel I read?
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: This is the next earliest book I remember reading for school. (I’m pretty sure, at least. Can’t think of any others right now at least.) I loved it then, and I still do.
The Giver by Lois Lowry: I remember reading and enjoying this in middle school. So much so that I read the two sequels that existed at the time – Gathering Blue and Messenger. I don’t think it really holds up as an adult, though I don’t hate it as much as some people I’ve seen.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: I remember having to read this in eighth (and again in ninth) grade. I enjoyed it so much at the time that I read ahead, before rereading it again with the rest of the class. It was one of my favorite books as a teenager.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: This is one of the only things I remember reading in high school. I remember liking it, though parts of it made me sad.
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins: I remember reading this for college. I enjoyed it well enough whilst reading, and I’ve remained miffed to this day that we finished up the book in class and never had a final discussion about it! The instructor had one for every fifty pages or so and then just didn’t for the last bit of the book! It was infuriating! We just went on to the next required reading, unceremoniously!
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: I loved this when I read it in college, and I still love it today. (I also enjoy retellings of it, as we’ve seen.)
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: I remember enjoying this novel eventually. It took me some time while reading it, though. It was sooo slow.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: The main thing about this book I remember is that it was boring. (To me.) I didn’t even care for the modern retelling of it – The Wife Upstairs – that I read a few years later. I ended up DNF-ing the retelling.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: I remember being bored by this one too, though not nearly as bored as I was when I read Jane Eyre. I guess I kind of felt more neutral towards this one.
